Private Equity

Putting Capital to Work, Making Companies Stronger.

Overview

Our investments span a wide range of industries around the world in established and growth-oriented businesses alike. Playing a vital role in helping companies realize their growth potential, we uncover value by identifying great companies and enhancing their performance by providing patient capital and operating support to strong management teams. Our approach helps our portfolio companies grow core businesses, launch new initiatives, make transformative acquisitions and upgrade technologies and systems to support their long-term strategy.

We provide more than just capital. We seek to make the companies we invest in stronger through a bottoms-up strategy of transformation. Crucially, we bring the expertise of our Portfolio Operations Group to provide strategic guidance on a variety of operational improvements, including revenue growth, procurement, leadership development, lean process and IT optimization, energy sustainability, and employee health care.

Transformative Impact

We strive to create value by investing in great businesses where our capital, strategic insight, global relationships and operational support can drive transformation that unlocks the company’s potential. In addition to benefiting our investors, the improvements in growth and global competitiveness benefit workers, communities and other stakeholders.

We are patient investors who practice the art of the long view, and are committed to achieving the best long-term outcomes for our businesses and our investors.

DISCIPLINED

Due Diligence

Our investment approach is based on a disciplined due diligence process that measures risk while identifying the catalysts for increased value. We purposefully engage only in friendly transactions and work with talented management teams to achieve transformative results. Our specialized Portfolio Operations Group helps to maximize value by improving processes across varied elements of a business’s operations.

The returns that these investments earn for our investors – pension funds, academic and charitable institutions, governments and other institutions, as well as retail investors – help to secure and grow the assets needed to support retirees and fund essential programs.

$126 billion AUM

Blackstone is a global leader in private equity, with $126 billion in assets under management through our opportunistic and private equity segments.

More than
95 Portfolio Companies

Our portfolio of more than 95 companies with more than $79 billion in combined annual revenue employs more than 470,000 people around the world.

Over 250 Private Equity
Professionals

Our team of over 250 private equity professionals around the world are based out of offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

All numbers are as of September 30, 2018.

$40.5billion

Available Capital to Invest

“

“We are constantly looking for situations where we see something, or we are able to add value in a way that our competitors don't. Our people feel the obligation to go out there and find special situations where we can intervene to drive change.”

- Joseph Baratta

Global Head of Private Equity

Pro-active, targeted sourcing

Sector-based, theme-driven deal sourcing is the primary responsibility and mandate of our investment professionals. We aim to source high-quality and proprietary investment opportunities by proactively developing and leveraging strong relationships with companies and key deal intermediaries. At regular pipeline meetings with sector teams, we review potential opportunities and determine what resources – both internal and external – are best suited to pursue those opportunities.

Value-oriented discipline

In determining value for new investments, we focus on a business’s current outlook and judge the predictability of that outlook over time, while also factoring in what we can do for the business to drive even better outcomes after our acquisition.

Transformational operating improvements

We actively target companies in which significant value can be created through clear strategic and operational change, and created our Portfolio Operations Group to provide hands-on support to help our portfolio companies become more productive, efficient and valuable. Once a company joins the portfolio, we help management craft a plan to reach their full potential over the long term, and provide assistance as they put this plan into practice.

Our Portfolio

We are proud of Blackstone’s role as a positive economic catalyst for the companies in our Corporate Private Equity portfolio. We work to identify, invest in and enhance the value of great businesses.

Global in scope, our Corporate Private Equity group has offices in New York, London, Dusseldorf, Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sydney. As of September 30, 2018, our Corporate Private Equity funds held interests in more than 95 companies.

Traditional Leveraged Buyouts

We pursue control leveraged buyouts of both large and mid-cap companies globally

Our large buyouts tend to be in companies of global scale with strong brands and high relative market shares, where we can still drive growth and operating improvements. Our mid-cap buyouts tend to be of companies that are differentiated vs. larger competitors and have protected market niches and multiple avenues of growth and operating improvements.

December 2015

In December 2015, private equity funds managed by Blackstone, along with Corsair Capital and co-investors from each firm, acquired a majority stake in First Eagle Investment Management, a privately-held asset management firm focused on fundamental, flexible and benchmark-agnostic investing on behalf of institutional and individual clients.

In February 2014, private equity funds managed by Blackstone acquired from Deutsche Telekom a stake in Scout24, Germany’s leading online classifieds company. Scout24 operates two leading online classified websites in Germany as well other market-leading online businesses in 6 other Western European countries.

In February 2015, private equity funds managed by Blackstone acquired Ixom via a corporate carve-out from ASX listed Orica Limited. Ixom is the largest independent chemical distributor in Australia and New Zealand and is also Australia’s largest chlor-alkali manufacturer and marketer of caustic soda and chlorine based products.

In November 2012, private equity funds managed by Blackstone acquired Vivint, a leading provider of smart home technology and services in North America. In October 2014, we completed an initial public offering of sister company Vivint Solar (NYSE: VSLR), a leading provider of distributed solar energy in the U.S. with the nation’s second largest residential solar power portfolio.

In April 2011, private equity funds managed by Blackstone acquired Mivisa, one of Spain’s largest manufacturers of metal cans for food products and Europe’s third-largest, which it helped continue expanding internationally through building two new factories and growing its emerging markets presence.

Buy and Build Platforms

Smaller companies, scalable platforms, backable management teams

In our “buy-and-build” transactions we tend to invest in smaller companies that have scalable platforms and backable management teams in large, fragmented industries, where we believe there are substantial revenue and margin benefits from sector consolidation.

August 2014

In August 2014, private equity funds managed by Blackstone invested in Service King, one of the largest and fastest growing collision repair networks in the U.S.

In April 2014, private equity funds managed by Blackstone acquired Accuvant, which, in January 2015, merged with FishNet Security to form Optiv, a leading provider of IT security technology and consulting services in the U.S.

Development Projects

Greenfield and later-stage development projects

We make both control and non-control investments in greenfield and later-stage development projects in energy and power and related sectors.

May 2012

In May 2012, private equity funds managed by Blackstone together made a $1.5bn equity commitment to Cheniere Energy Partners, L.P. in order to fund the construction of the Sabine Pass Liquefaction terminal, the first LNG liquefaction and export facility in the continental United States.

In April 2011, private equity funds managed by Blackstone formed a joint venture with Alta Resources to pursue emerging oil and gas shale plays in North America. The partnership acquired over 67,000 acres in the Duvernay shale play in Alberta, Canada, which were sold to Chevron (NYSE: CVX) in September 2013.

In November 2012, private equity funds managed by Blackstone formed a strategic partnership and made an investment with LLOG Exploration, one of the largest domestic, private oil and gas companies focused on exploration and development in the deep water Gulf of Mexico. In April 2015, the partnership’s Delta House floating production facility (“FPS”) achieved first production.

Growth Equity

Control and non-control growth equity investments

We make both control and non-control growth equity investments where our capital and operating expertise can act as catalysts for substantial revenue and enterprise value growth

December 2012

In December 2012, private equity funds managed by Blackstone invested in International Tractors Limited which manufactures Sonalika Farm Equipment and Tractors. It is one of the largest manufacturers in India with a strong presence in the tractor export market.

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